Vex

Vex is a Visual Editor for XML that hides the raw XML tags from the user, providing instead a word processor like interface. Vex uses standard DTD files to define document types and CSS stylesheets to define document layout. Vex contains definitions for DocBook and DITA. To edit other XML formats only a DTD and a CSS are needed.

Vex is based on the Eclipse platform, the same platform used to build the popular Eclipse Java development environment:

Vex leverages many of the mature plug-ins that make up the Eclipse Java IDE such as the CVS interface, document searching and bookmarking facilities, and searchable help system.

The Eclipse platform implements a sophisticated plug-in architecture, allowing Vex to be extended with third-party or custom, in-house plug-ins.

Vex is available with native look-and-feel for many platforms, including Windows, Linux/GTK, and Macintosh OS-X/Carbon.

Java developers using the Eclipse IDE can instal Vex into their IDE as a plug-in, making it easy to maintain software documentation or other XML files with Vex.

Vex is reusable: The Vex editor widget is available as a pure Java, cross-platform component with bindings SWT. Developers can re-use this widget, for example as an RCP application.

Vex has moved from the SourceForge project site to Eclipse (see Original Project Proposal). John Krasney has contributed the code of Vex to Eclipse as of August 2008. All code is now licensed under the Eclipse Public License.